It was time for brakes on the 4runner.
I live in the Colorado mountains, I have some extra weight and bigger tires on the 4Runner, plus I tow from time to time. My brakes don’t have it easy so it was logical to look for an upgrade over stock, especially given the cost of stock pads and rotors. When it comes to parts I always buy OEM or I upgrade. I started researching and decided to go with the Powerstop Z36 brake upgrade. Powerstop recommends that kit for a vehicle with larger than stock tires, added weight, or for towing at least once a year. It's a pretty complete package - pads, rotors, and hardware and on forums and facebook groups, I was seeing a lot of positive reviews and recommendations for it. I also decided to replace the stainless steel brake lines with the kit from Goodridge. A reputable brand, even Tirerack sells them, and their kit was actually for 6 lines, 1 per wheel and the 2 flex lines from the body to rear axle housing. I got high-quality DOT4 fluid and I was good to go.
Everything ready to go.
I thought I'd start with the stainless steel lines first. I was matching everything up to make sure it was right and notice a major, MAJOR, problem. The new bolts that came with the new lines to bolt the banjo fitting onto the rear caliper are dangerously undersized. You should have quite a few threads to screw in before you get to the point of collapsing the crush washers... this pile of hot garbage has 2 threads exposed.
This is dangerous, its an accident waiting to happen and there's not a chance in hell I would install this on any vehicle. This is extremely likely to end in catastrophic failure of the brake system. My mind was blown at the level of oversight here.
So the lines are a bust... we said screw it I'll leave the lines alone for now and we'll just do the brakes.
My helper and I started to tear everything down.
Turns out the Powerstop kit wasnt any better than the brake lines!
There was all sorts of debris in the zinc coating just waiting to get embedded into the brake pads. I've never seen a worse finish on new brake in my 15 years of working professionally in automotive.
I installed the pads and went to put the caliper pins in, but wait a minute... they aren't long enough to actually come out the back of the caliper.
So I reused the stock hardware to properly secure the pads and found another interesting tidbit.
This is how a pad should sit, the friction material stops just short of the edge of the rotor, especially when there a slight chamfer on the edge of the rotor. You want flat surface on flat surface.
But the inconsistencies in the build quality of the pads left the friction material hanging just a hair over the edge of the rotor. This is not acceptable.
At that point, I had enough. I said screw all this stupid crap and took one of the over vehicles over to Toyota and just bought all new OEM parts.
I definitely got my money's worth out the old brakes.
Front
Rear
We got the new pads and rotors installed, flushed the brake fluid, and adjusted the parking brake.
Because I've seen it asked about a decent amount I decided to take a quick video of how to adjust the parking brake so it grabs strong and stiffens up the parking brake pedal. Hopefully, this can help someone out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=it4BMOrM41g&feature=youtu.be